In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [75]
They didn’t ignore me. They simply went on with their lives, offering me no opportunity or reason to object. Everything seemed absolutely reasonable: the errands and chores, the meals and after-dinner excursions into town for ice cream. The isolation from my friends served to remove both empathy and influence, and I no longer had my parents’ constant suspicion to react against. If I acted sullen or shut myself in my sparsely furnished room, nothing changed—no one commented or demanded an explanation. Whatever void my emotional or physical absence created was filled with the camaraderie of family that existed whether I did or not.
I lay at night in my bed beneath the window, savoring my few remaining Marlboros. I thought of Patti and the others, imagining their encouragement: “They just want you to be their good little girl. They don’t really give a shit about you.” I wanted to hear Patti’s gravelly voice, but I wasn’t allowed to use the phone. I had to stay smart, be patient, or I’d end up in a place worse yet—St. Anthony. (I never doubted this consequence and still cannot bring myself to ask the question: Was it only a threat? Would you have sent me there, locked me in a place so far away I could never return?)
Evenings, we’d cruise through town, hot summer wind rushing us through our Dairy Queen treats. It was like this with the Langs: unrestrained in little ways, spontaneous, childlike. And maybe that’s what I found with them, that lost part of myself. I was fourteen, and it wasn’t the drugs or the music or the potential sex that drew me to the world; it was something else that even now I can only attempt to articulate.
My parents loved me, within reason, and that reason seemed dependent upon my obedience. They loved me, of course, even in rejection, and perhaps saw in their rejection the absolute and logical progression of their love. But such love is not unconditional, and what I yearned for was unequivocable acceptance, for the familial walls to prove themselves strong, beyond fracture.
I risked little with my peers, love never being part of our fragmented equation. Unlike my parents’ love, the Langs’ was not inherent nor assumed. If they were willing to take me in when my mother and father were unwilling to keep me, did it mean that their love was greater? If they accepted me without derision the way I was—bad girl, delinquent, unrepentant—then there was little more I could do to turn them away from me.
They still acted as though I were that timid, backwoods girl, lapping up praise like a puppy. And wasn’t I? Brother Lang smacked over the French toast I made him for breakfast. Luke winked and grinned when I served him his coffee thick with Cremora. Sister Lang and Sarah assumed me capable of working beside them, and I forgot to resent their assumption. Terry took me to see osprey along the river, their huge nest a crisscross of sticks. I could not imagine why he wanted to share with me their graceful flight and pinioned dives, nor could I make sense of the joy I felt watching them rise with trout spasming in their talons.
I can believe it was the land I missed, that part of me was still fused to cedar and lupine. A tree will weave its new fiber through strands of wire, lock its heart tight around a stray bullet. I had left the woods wounded, wrenched from what had sustained me since birth.
Some are born to the wilderness. Some come to the wilderness to be reborn. It was where my parents first found their salvation, and where I would once again find mine.
We went to the river, the men to fish, the women to watch from lawn chairs, their crochet hooks glinting over pale green thread. How long since my parents had left? Two weeks? Three? Soon the Langs and I would be moving to Spokane, an hour away, where Brother Lang had been given the pastorship of a small church and its depleted congregation. Terry wanted one last chance at the big trout, so we made a day of it: fried chicken, potato salad, thick wedges of watermelon.
There was a rod for me. I rigged it without comment, still unwilling to offer any